


Pompeii

by ZaliaChimera



Category: gen:LOCK (Web Series)
Genre: Affection, Anger, Angst, Enemies, Escape, Fights, Friendship, Gen, Genderfluid Character, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Infection, Introspection, Military, Military Backstory, Mind Control, On the Run, Post Episode: s01e06, Regret, Safehouses, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-05 18:19:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17923916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZaliaChimera/pseuds/ZaliaChimera
Summary: Kazu may not be the greatest at following the official military rules, the ones imposed from on-high. But the other rules? The ones you learn from your squad mates and pass on when it's your turn? He knows those.But after two weeks on the run, it's hard not to break them.Never ever look under the helmet of a Union soldier.





	Pompeii

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I really needed to get this fic written before it gets jossed to hell on Saturday (or if I'm proven correct I get to gloat!).

Something hits him in the stomach, and Kazu startles awake, gasping for breath and adrenaline already speeding through him. He’s on his feet, moving for an attack before he’s fully conscious. It’s only the sudden flare of the light switching on that stops him.

Union soldiers probably don’t bother turning on the lights when they raid a place.

He scrubs a hand across his face. Hasn’t been shot yet so he’s probably good to start thinking rather than reacting. The room is dingy, moth eaten beds and couches, and a big hole through the window they’d covered with black plastic to make sure no light seeped out. Valentina leans against the doorframe, watching him, so they can’t be under attack. 

Right. They’re in a safe house. He can’t remember where. He’d stopped trying to remember the locations a week ago, when they’d hit the fifth in as many days. They’re all the same anyway; anonymous houses or cabins, run down and off the beaten track. Just good enough to spend a few hours while they avoid a Union fly-over, and to let Yaz rest up before hours more piloting the transport.

It isn’t sustainable. Kazu had picked that up in the droop of Cammie’s headset, the tense line of Yaz’s mouth, and in Chase’s silence. 

“What time is it?”

“Too early by half,” Valentina says. Their tone is light, but the expression is sharp and hard. Hadn’t they said that they’d done their time? Ukraine had been a shitshow. Even a continent away, Kazu had heard that. Ugly, dirty, savage guerrilla warfare, a losing battle as the Union crept forward city by city. Ugly and dirty are two words he would never have associated with Valentina, who is clearly made from steel and lightning, but the way they’ve taken to this enforced hiding, strike and run, he’s starting to see it.

He looks down at the thing that had hit him. His kit bag. Ah.

Valentina catches the glance and the unspoken question. They have always been observant but he thinks it’s become more pronounced since the fight, since they’d moved as one and for a minute there had been no difference between them.

“Proximity alarm went off,” Valentina says. “A few kilometres out.”

“Are you sure it isn’t a bear?” Those are animals that exist here, right? Forests and mountains and little log cabins. 

“Only if the bears carry assault rifles.”

Well, that’s a horrifying thought, and he wouldn’t put it past the Union to try. They’ve fucked the rest of the world. Why not fuck the wildlife while they’re at it? They just can’t stand the idea of anything not being under their control.

He runs a hand through his hair and stoops to swing his bag over his shoulder, before nodding and Valentina. Ready. It’s easy to be ready when all you own fits in a single duffle bag and you’d never got around to unpacking in the first place.

The others are already moving when he emerges; Cammie has a protein bar hanging from her mouth and moves like a zombie, while Yaz and Valentina sweep the place clean with an efficiency that can only point to practice. 

“Get to the ship,” Yaz says, jerking her head towards Cammie. “We’ll finish up here.”  
Sweep the place, she means. Leave as little trace as they can. Make the Union think they’re chasing ghosts not people who need sleep and food and time to grieve.

Kazu nods. Checks his sidearm. They’ll need to figure out how to acquire more ammo soon. One more problem in a whole list of them. 

The ship isn’t far away. Just a few hundred metres, beyond the tree line. It’s not great cover, but it’s the best they could do. There’s nowhere that’s great cover now. Not now the line haas broken and Union incursions are speeding up. Kazu misses the days when the map looked like Swiss cheese, pockets of resistance everywhere. Those holes have been closing rapidly.

Cammie sticks close to him as they dash towards the ship, guarded by the looming figure out Chase’s Holon. It looks much bigger out here towering over the trees than it did back in the hangar.

“I’ll get it fired up,” Cammie says as they approach, already working through the controls on her data pad. No sense wasting time.

The short jog to the ship is quiet. Rustling leaves, the crunch of sticks and dirt underfoot, even a few birds singing overhead because fuck them, they don’t know or care what’s going on. It feels like it should be peaceful except he’s still waiting for the adrenaline surge to wear off and it’s been two weeks since they left. No wonder they’re all but wrecked.

The ship comes into view when they break the tree line, the hum of the engine filling the air. Relief floods him, even though it’s been a scant few hours since they last saw it and inevitably he’ll hate every screw and rivet of it by the time they next stop to rest. There’s that creeping fear that they’ll wake one day to find it surrounded by a cloud of Union nanotech, and then they’re all fucked. 

He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to forget that last view of the base, the cloud engulfing the steel and concrete and flesh. It latches hooks into his mind, replays every time he tries to sleep. He wonders if this is how the people of Pompeii had felt, just before Vesuvius had sealed them in boiling ash.

Cammie bounds ahead to the ship, is halfway up the ramp when Kazu hears it. Movement. He holds still, hoping he’s just hearing things. Hoping it really is a bear. 

Yeah, bears don’t wear boots and walk in time with each other.

He gestures towards Cammie, and jerks his head towards the trees. Her head set ears stand straight in worry but she goes into the ship. Need to get out of here as quickly as they can. He wants to call Yaz, but doesn’t dare risk radio right now just in case. They’ll be here in a few minutes anyway. Instead, he looks up at the trees, picks one that seems to have decent branches to help him up, and starts to climb. 

He has never been an outdoors person. He’d done his time in the military sure, gone through basic, but the Union doesn’t care about fields and trees and shit. They care about cities and population centres. That’s what Kazu cares about too except he’s more interested in the nightclub scene than wresting control of every last bastion of freedom left in the world.

The bark cuts into his palms. He thinks the splinters have splinters. But finally he makes it to a large branch far enough up the tree that he’s pretty sure the Union grunts won’t notice him. He perches there and peers out towards where he’d heard the sound.

It’s hard to see through the other trees, but there, he finally spots movement. Not many. Not as bad as he’d feared. Four, maybe five soldiers. Trying to be stealthy and catch them as they ran from the main assault he’d warrant.

Fuck, they’re creepy.

Mecha and actual robots he doesn’t mind. But the soldiers? It’s the way they move. The not quite rightness of it, one step off the ledge into the uncanny valley. 

He waits until they’re underneath him, a step or two past him, and then he falls like a rock onto the back of the nearest soldier.The soldier goes down, smashing into the ground hard enough that Kazu doubts it’ll be getting back up. He takes advantage of the others’ confusion, and lashes out before they can gather themselves. Catches one in the back of the knees to send it sprawling forward, and follows up with a spin and a punch and then it’s all a blur of movement and impact. It’s like dancing. He feels it swell through him, the efficiency of each blow sliding into another to become more than the sum of its parts.

He takes the last soldier down with an elbow and lets it drop.

“Kazu!”

He turns back towards where the ship is when he recognises Valentina’s voice. He raises a foot to step over the unconscious form of the last soldier.

He stops when he catches sight of the way the helmet has come loose, half up the soldier’s face with the force of his blow. Scruffy looking chin that’s for sure.

“Kazu.” Valentina’s voice is closer now, sharp with something he’d like to be concern but is probably annoyance and either way he should get back to the ship now so they can leave.

“I’m coming,” he calls back, and crouches down instead, a morbid curiosity filling his chest and his gut.

There are military rules which he sucks at following. Those are the official ones. The ones sent from up high. Then there are the other military rules. The ones that you learn from the rest of your squad, from your sergeant, from the guys who’ve been out there just a bit longer than you. Don’t fuck your squad mate’s girl or guy. Don’t eat the veggie omelette MRE. Pretend you don’t hear your squad mate crying in the middle of the night because their hometown just went blank on the maps.

Never, ever look underneath a Union soldier’s helmet. Everyone knows it. Everyone knows why even if they don’t talk about it. The stories. You bottle it up and force it down and hope you’re never in a position to need the rule first hand.

His mouth dry, Kazu reaches down and breaks that rule. He grabs the helmet, pulls it off the soldier’s head. Stares down at the familiar face. Still stubbly. Hair too long for regulations but no one has cared about that kind of regulation for years. 

The last time Kazu had seen Leon’s face, it had been an argument. A stupid argument that didn’t even need to have happened because the fucker had been hiding that goddam party.

And now he’s here, face empty and slack, eyes clouded with the seething glitter of nanotech which seeps into his skin and makes him just one more Union grunt.

Never ever look underneath a Union soldier’s helmet. You don’t know who you’ll find.

Kazu’s hand clenches into a fist against the dirt, red rage growling in the back of his throat. Fuck them. Fuck the Union and fuck their technology and fuck Leon for being like this and... and fuck _them_ for not being good enough.

He stands and turns to ram his hand against the nearest tree. It doesn’t make it. Something firm but a little more giving catches his fist. 

He looks up at Valentina. They glance down at Leon on the ground, and Kazu sees a hundred emotions flash across their face. Grief, and anger, and a horrible resignation. Ukraine had been a shitshow. They both know what the Union does to people like them. 

“We have to go,” Valentina says. 

“We can’t leave him,” Kazu says. He hates the rawness in his voice, but what else is he supposed to do? Screaming would risk bringing the rest of the Union down on their heads.

“You know we have to,” Valentina says. Their hand gentles around Kazu’s, strokes down over his hand, a curious intimacy, before releasing him. “It may be kinder to kill him.”

His stomach lurches at that, even if he knows that Valentina is right. Leon wouldn’t have wanted this, would never have wanted to become another cog in the Union’s war machine. And yet the selfish part of him, which, to be fair, is most of him, can’t stand the thought. He has to thank him for the Callsign one day. Has to apologise for trying to push him into a fight.

The choice is made for them. The engine of the ship rumbles, and the Holon casts a shadow over them when it stands up. Valentina grabs his wrist.

“The best thing we can do is keep fighting. We’re no good to anyone if we’re dead or like them.” Val gestures to the fallen soldiers.

“Yeah,” Kazu agrees. He kicks the helmet from where it lies into the nearest bush. The only revenge he has right now and it’s pathetic. “Let’s go.”

Val leads them back through the trees. Cammie waves at them as they approach. “What kept you?”

He doesn’t need to share a glance with Valentina to know they’re thinking the same thing. Cammie probably knows about the Union soldiers, albeit in an abstract way. But she doesn’t need to know about this. About Leon and who knows who else?

Soon they’ll have to teach her the Rule. 

“Not today,” Val says under their breath. “Today we run.”

As the ramp starts to close behind them, Kazu hears the relentless marching of feet, and thinks of clouds over Pompeii.


End file.
